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The Aroma Board Game Night

Over the past year of so I have become increasingly more involved in the board gaming community here in Norwich. Most of my Board Gaming happens at NoBoG but I also do several events at Athena and occasionally I have a look at what else is going on out there which is how I found out about a board game evening at Aroma.

Aroma is a lovely coffee shop in the heart of Norwich that is known for being a bit unique with a location that is set across three floors. I have been past it many times on my way home from NoBoG but this was the first time that I had the opportunity to venture inside.

Once I was inside I was greeted Tom and Tony who were very welcoming, they run a blog called White Mason Reviews which I would highly recommend checking out. As well as on the website you can check them out on Facebook and on Twitter, they do some great stuff and I can’t wait to see there thoughts on this night of Board Games.

We began with a few rounds of a little card game called We Didn’t Playtest which is very random, can either result in a lot of losing and is usually over pretty quickly. The first round was over as soon as it started due to a card that saw everyone win and it just got even more random after that, especially once the nicknames started flying around.

After a few rounds of that, Tom and Tony broke our a newly acquired copy of a game called Titan Race which they billed as Mario Kart but as a board game. I was rather intrigued by this game that includes a character that looks a bit like Fawkes from the Harry Potter series so naturally I had to go with that.

None of us had played this game before so we decided to try out the grand prix mode that meant we had to cross three tiles to win. In order to do that the first player roles all the dice, taking the one they want most before the other players get to choose out of what was left. This carries on until it gets to the last player who picks up all the used dice and re rolls them, beginning the process all over again.

Each terrain has it’s own unique effects, some of which are good and some of which are bad. The trick to navigating a successful course is using the dice, the board and your special abilities to outwit and out attack your opponents. Nick had the power to lay traps on adjacent spaces which he used to great effect on pretty much every player but mostly me.

However one my special abilities let me use his own ability against him which was pretty satisfying. Although the satisfaction didn’t last long as before long I was surrounded on all sides and promptly knocked out which meant I had to miss a turn which sucked. I couldn’t do much at that point but I could take a dice so at least I got to mess with the others a little bit.

Knocking me out put me back far enough that Tony and Tom were both able to storm off into the lead. Tom had a great strategy of losing health points, taking the result he wanted and using that result to regain said health points. However at this point I was convinced that Tony was going to win but at the last minute Tom pulled out his secret weapon to switch places with Tony before moving over the finish line to claim victory.

Overall I had a lot of fun playing Titan Race, it is an fun game with some interesting mechanics and it doesn’t last all that long. Each board is reversible which means there are a lot of lots of different combinations to choose from and I can’t wait to have another go at this game.

Following on from that we broke out a copy of a game that is called Nuts. Players take a nut from the Nut deck followed by an attempt to steel nuts from other players with the aim of being the first to reach a total value of twenty. It is a very random filler type game that is actually really easy to pick up and one that is also a lot of fun, you can block, aid or attempt to have a bit of fun to force players to play rock paper scissors.

Once we had played a couple of rounds of that the table I was on decided to have a go at a warcraft themed version of Trivial Pursuit, however I no nothing about this so I decided to jump ship and head over to another table for a game of Hey That’s My fish. It has been some time since I last played this game but it didn’t take me long to outmanourveour my fellow gamers to secure enough points for the win.

I just wanted to thank Tom, Tony and the staff at Aroma for a great night of board games and one amazing hot chocolate, if you get the chance to go then I would highly recommend it.